by Carl Muller
Oh, there was always the agitation to be free. The British faced a rebellion in 1818 and another in 1848 and wrote home to say that these Ceylonese were most revolting. Certain local stalwarts even formed a Sinhala Maha Sabha1 and demanded Dominion Status. The Council, headed by a leading politico who was later bumped off by a Buddhist monk, actually demanded on March 26, 1942, that the British Secretary of State quit stalling and give an assurance of Dominion Status. The motion read:
(a) The British Government should give an assurance to the effect as has been done in the case of certain other British possessions and
(b) That Sir Stafford Cripps should be instructed to extend his Indian visit to Ceylon also in order that he might discuss the matter with representatives of the people.2
The National Congress also got into the act. In this body however, members held conflicting views. The D. S. Senanayake clique were all for Dominion Status. Wasn’t it just right? D. S. for D. S. A made-to-order manifesto which had quite a ring to it!
J. R. Jayewardene, however, had different views and this led to the usual in-fighting. Long years later J.R.J. with great shrewdness of manner and force of personality became the island’s first president, but it will always be remembered that he held a maverick stance when all others thought that freedom was all. In fact the infighting became so pitched that D.S.S. broke away from the National Congress and having sulked for the appropriate time, re-joined to put the J.R.J, clique in disarray.
The British hemmed and hawed. They were reminded of the Atlantic Charter. They also knew that the forces of nationalism were not lightly brushed aside any longer. So 1948 saw the end of British control in South Asia. Unlike India, Ceylon made a peaceful transition to self-government.
HRH the Duke of Gloucester strode in to read the Speech from the Throne and open the first session of the Dominion Parliament. It was a neat record of British stewardship, actually:
. . . After a period of nearly a century and a half, during which the status of Ceylon was that of a colony in My Empire, she now takes her place as a free and independent member of the British Commonwealth of Nations.
It was in the year 1796 that the Dutch Governor of Colombo surrendered the town and all Dutch territory in Ceylon and under the terms of the Peace of Amiens of 1802, the Maritime Provinces of Ceylon became a British possession. In the year 1815, in accordance with the terms of the Kandyan Convention, the dominion of the Kandyan Province was vested in the Sovereign of Great Britain and the whole island thus became a part of My Empire.
. . . I have given over charge of the conduct of all relations between my Government of the United Kingdom and My Government of Ceylon to my Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations.
I have also, on the advice of My Prime Minister in Ceylon, appointed Sir Henry Monck Mason Moore to be the first Governor General . . .
All very stirring of course, but the chronicler must record the feeling of regret that pulsed in many Burgher homes as the old order changed. Not just Burgher homes, true, for many Sinhalese and Tamil homes also felt that things would never be the same again.
‘But we are free!’ one would exclaim.
‘How? Now can wear a sarong and go to Governor General’s house?’
‘Now our people in charge. Our people running our country!’
‘Our people running. That’s true. Already putting big arguments. All the bloody cooks trying to make one big soup.’
‘So what to do, men. So much to do, no? You think it’s easy after so long? Have to try, no?’
Oh, there was much misgiving. ‘Left us in the soup and going, that’s what. You think it will be the same?’
‘What, men? Our country, no? You wait and see, will you. We can do anything now.’
The Burghers, let it be said, were quite distressed. They had always held that edge under European rule. But the twinge passed quickly enough. Still under a British Governor-General, still a part of the British Commonwealth, they remained an essential part of the island’s fabric and found that their services were as wanted as ever before. And the British, too, didn’t just up and quit. Many remained on the tea plantations, the rubber estates, in the Port, the Oil Facilities offices, the shipping, brokering and freighting companies, in banks and merchant houses. At least, there was no Iron Curtain as forecast by Churchill that would descend through Europe.
Carloboy, of course, couldn’t have cared a snap. In his new home in Kalubowila, he found an interesting set of new friends and new territory to explore. Things happened, of course. New neighbours reached that stage where they woke up each day to wish that they hadn’t. Winston Dias, who was so proud of his king coconut palm would foam at the mouth each time he emerged to find that the best of his pink-orange crop had emigrated. Honorine van Sanden would blanch and scream to her children: ‘Royce, Therese, Marlo, come inside at once!’ and once her indignant litter came in with general remarks like, ‘What, Mummy, won’t allow to play, even,’ Mrs van Sanden would grind her false teeth.
‘Play? You’re going to play with that nex’-door garden devil? Told, no, not to encourage? Saw what did to Mrs Lisk’s windows? What were you doing in the corner there?’
Royce made a face. ‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing? You want a slap from me? What is that you’re holding behind your back?’
Royce produces a catapult. It is in an embryonic stage.
‘Give that here! Who told you to make this?’ snatches the weapon away and marches to the kitchen. ‘Coming to make catapults and give. Not enough breaking other peoples’ windows. Now you want people to come here also and complain?’ tosses the half-done ‘pult into the fire, ‘Next time he comes I’ll give him with the broomstick! Not enough what he’s doing, now coming to make and give here also? and what are you also going to do with the boys, miss?’ this to Therese who is only nine and as mischievous as a parcel of monkeys, ‘Told, no, to take a broom and sweep the house?’
Therese gives her famous hangdog look.
Fascinating, too, was the Dutch canal that skirted Saranankara Road and carried household rubbish in festering piles—empty Kotex boxes, coconut shells, rotting banana leaves, shreds of sacking, empty sardine tins, old bandages, shredded bicycle tyres, whatever. This waterway looped around like a spineless knicker tape on a dirty midriff. On the Wellawatte bank was a colony of squatters in cadjan huts who ripened the air with their everyday chatter and, in lighter moments, kept threatening to fuck each other’s mothers. This, if taken seriously, would immediately classify this lower stratum of Sinhala society as a bunch of evil-minded mother-fuckers who also wielded knives and clubs with gusto.
The neighbourhood girls, too, were interesting and quite appealing to any hot-blooded boy. There was, above all, the Swan’s little beauties, Marianne and Rosabelle, who considered every boy for miles around their personal property and were, as a result, much detested by Sonia Beekmeyer, Maryse Lisk, Carla Gray, Menik Wijesinghe, Barbara Fernando, Renee Ludwick, Nirasha Amerasinghe and Janine and Josephine de Kretser.
The boys, in lazier moments, buriched under a cashew tree in old Boteju’s garden, would discuss the merits and demerits of the girls around them.
‘Machang,3 Tony, your sister is looking nice these days.’
‘Why? You’re getting interested? So put a cap4 if you want,’ says Tony Gray expansively.
‘So just put a word, will you.’
‘You’re mad? She’ll eat my head. ‘Nother thing I think that Tudor Wijesinghe is interested in her. When go to Sunday school whole time he’s talking with her.’
‘Adai, Merril, fine one you are. What about Sonia, then?’ says Malcolm Morrel.
‘What about her?’ asks Merril de Kretser.
‘Just see this bugger,’ Malcolm says, ‘only last week was running behind that Sonia Beekmeyer. What? She gave you the boot or what?’
‘Yes, I also noticed,’ Carloboy says, ‘now suddenly he’s interested in Tony’s sister.’
Anil Fernando, the smallest
of the gang pipes up. ‘That Menik is also not bad, no?’
The boys stare and guffaw. ‘What do you know, you small bugger? How the bugger? Menik! Pukka one you’re saying not bad. Half the buggers in the bloody Polytechnic must have landed her already.’
Carloboy jostles Anil and grins. ‘See your size. She’ll eat you, you go close. Why don’t you put a cap to Therese?’
Royce van Sanden would snort. ‘You don’t come to try even. My mother will kill you.’
Carloboy stretches. ‘Hot, men, today. You heard what happened to Maryse? Big row. Father caught and hammered the tuition master also.’
‘I say, yes, men. Not to be seen now, no?’
‘Keeping in the house. Won’t allow to go anywhere. These days even Ivor won’t come to play.’
‘Why, what happened?’
‘Pukka thing, men. Tuition master used to come, no, to teach Sinhala? Mrs Lisk caught, men. Master’s hand under the dress.’
‘No!’
‘Yes, men. An’ she’s also nicely squeezing his cock. Hell of a row there was.’
‘Bloody wretch. How the parts she’s putting when going on the road? One day I put a whistle and should have seen the face. Now how?’
‘Wait, will you,’ says Alan Ludwick, ‘she’ll come one day, no. Must put a hoot and say how the tuition!’
All most entertaining of course and Carloboy would go to his room to write many sheets of undying love to Audrey although he had, as he admitted, ‘other fish to fry’, one being Carla Gray who accompanied him to the mosquito-laden, untenanted, overgrown, tree-peopled garden that lay beyond the fences and an abandoned rice field and there, snug and unseen in the confines of a thick hedge, allowed herself to be kissed and have her knickers yanked off and lay on a pile of damp straw while Carloboy rode her, spent himself and dusted away the black ants that ran along her thighs. He comforted himself in the thought that what Audrey didn’t know couldn’t hurt her a whit, and, surely, he didn’t love Carla, did he? Quite the man of the world was our Carloboy becoming!
Audrey, however, was becoming more insistent. Couldn’t he come for the holidays, for a week, for a weekend? Didn’t he care anymore? Shrewdly, the girl also wrote that if she were he, she wouldn’t care what anybody said. ‘I’ll just take the first bus and come,’ she wrote, adding reams of gushes, undying love, and wilily enough, how the thought of that eternal morning on the banks of the Malwatte river still made her tremble at the knees and give her that very warm feeling in places she was too shy to mention.
In college, too, Bruno took up the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Carloboy revelled in the high jinks on the Mississippi. Would he ever have such freedom, he thought. And thought again, ‘Why not?’ That evening he cycled to Maradana, circuited the junction, the railway station and followed, along Drieberg’s Avenue, the railway lines, noting the direction. He came upon the black iron Victoria bridge spanning the Kelani river. Crossing this, he followed the road. It branched. Roundabout signposts said Negombo to left, Kandy to the right. And farther along another branch with a feeder road to the Kelaniya Temple. He followed the main road and was satisfied to see the railtrack running right. Yes, he had his direction. He pedalled along and ahead, still to right, was the Kelaniya railway station. With a sigh of satisfaction he turned and went home, was stormed at for returning so late and went in to prepare for his own Tom Sawyer adventure. Money, he told himself, was important. He broke his till and counted thirty-one rupees. He decided to boost the kitty.
‘Give my lunch money now,’ he told Beryl.
‘What for?’
‘Father Sebastian said to come and serve mass tomorrow. Other altar servers can’t come.’
‘So? Go and serve and come.’
‘So no time, no? Straight from there I’ll go to school.’ ‘Without eating even?’
‘I’ll go to Granny’s. Will give to eat something.’
Beryl considered for an instant, then gave him a rupee.
‘Give a little more, will you? For one rupee nothing proper to eat.’
‘So all these days giving a rupee?’
‘Yes, and just eating buns and plantains. Have to inflate the bike also.’
Beryl, exasperated, flung another rupee at him. ‘Here! Take and go!’ But Carloboy knew where to look. Mummy always had money in her machine table draw. He nipped in, pushed away a pile of sewing, tried the draw. He took the neatly folded ten rupee notes. Ah, thirty rupees. He felt no qualms. His mother sewed, took in sewing, and hid her earnings. Beryl always maintained that it was what any wife would do. ‘If know I have a little money, will take and go and buy a bottle,’ she told Mrs Ludwick and that worthy would heave and say, ‘One thing, these men!’ It was just as easy to cadge another two rupees from Aunty Millie who smiled fondly when she spied him at five the next morning.
‘Going to mass?’ she asked.
Carloboy nodded. If he did, he would be in the presbytery where the altar boys knelt and not seen by the congregation anyway. He swung around the church, dumped his schoolbooks at his aunt’s home and pedalled away.
Morning was sneaking in from every direction. It usually does when the day promises to be hot and the sun turns baker. Crows had begun their kwa-kwow and the shadows on the road began to dissolve.
‘Von Bloss!’ called Perimpanayagam and looked up, scanned the class eagerly and marked the boy absent. He also cheered up considerably.
At five that evening Beryl put down what she was embroidering and went to the kitchen. She had engaged a servant that morning, a well-rounded, young Sinhalese woman of twenty who lived on the canal bank. ‘Now five the time,’ Beryl said, ‘big baby still coming not. Flask inside his tea keep.’
At six-thirty Carloboy was drinking a cup of incredibly weak tea in a small kiosk at Kegalla. A lorry drove up and the driver shouted: ‘This bicycle whose?’
When Carloboy came anxiously out the man said, ‘Ah, baby, a little move it. To park can’t.’
Carloboy obliged. He had come a long way. Seventy-seven kilometres, to be near-exact, and another thirty-nine would take him to Kandy, but the worst, as the man who served him the tea had said, was ahead. The man had raised an eyebrow. ‘Kandy going? On bicycle? What for?’
‘Just.’
‘Baby from where?’
‘Dehiwela—no, Dehiwela not—Kalubowila.’
‘Ammo, mad work, no? So far to go on bicycle. So incline to climb also you’re going?’
‘Incline?’
‘If not. Feet almost one thousand to climb must. See will you these children,’ he told others in the kiosk, ‘bicycles climbing Kandy going. How? From Colombo coming.’ The lorry driver eyed the boy. ‘I also Kandy going. Baby want lorry inside come. Bicycle in the back can put.’ Carloboy eyed the man. It was a tempting idea but he knew how easy it was for a boy to get himself into a corner. At least, he could be robbed of his bicycle. And wouldn’t he be at the complete mercy of the man—no, two men—for he had noticed that there was another when the lorry parked. He shook his head and another thought struck him: the borrowed bike and that crazy career along the Galle Road, clinging to the tailboard of a lorry. Well, why not? He’ll be more careful this time.
‘I’ll come,’ he said, ‘from the back, catch and come.’
‘Baby mad?’ the hotel man said. ‘Those bends just catching and going can’t.’
The lorry driver laughed. ‘Let’s see, will you, like that going if want, catch and come. If can’t, let off and go.’
By now a knot of loafers had gathered to give advice. ‘Night time road to see even can’t. This devil at speed if bend taking for baby thoppi,’ one said. Another told the driver, ‘Ado, you just go. Other people just into trouble trying to put.’
The driver shrugged. ‘Just said, no?’ and to Carloboy, ‘Baby you want anything do. Habai,5 on bicycle incline climbing can’t. Get down and bicycle push-push and walking have to go. I’m but going. Straight Kandy I’m going.’
It was growing dark and ligh
ts had long since sprung up in the town. Carloboy straddled his bicycle, swung around and caught the tailboard of the lorry. ‘Right,’ he called, ‘you go!’
Sonnaboy, too, was on his bicycle. He had told Beryl, ‘Bugger must be in some house or the other. I’ll go and see.’
Neighbours had ventured to suggest an accident. Freda Pereira told Mrs Pat Silva, ‘You wait an’ see if double decker didn’t run over or what. My Romaine also asking to go on bicycle to school. I won’t let!’
Old Mrs Ludwick told Beryl, ‘Go, child, and pray. Ask God to send home quickly.’
Beryl glared. ‘Let him come!’ she snapped. ‘Not enough he’s getting, still dancing the devil. Only know to worry, that’s all he knows to do.’
Meanwhile Carloboy was speeding through Kegalla town, past the police station. The road was broad and riddled with pot holes and broken metal but he found that the lorry’s headlights, picking out the verge and the long puddles of water he was forced to splash through, allowed him to see what lay ahead and take, where necessary, evasive action. Then street lights thinned, buildings grew far apart and night fell with a thud. He whizzed on. If only those nambypambies in his class—in the whole school—could see him now. From Hingula the real climb began and the lorry slowed to a crawl, belching puffs of exhaust smoke, clashing gears, whining around Z-bends. The eyes of dogs flared green in the headlights. He hung on and shifted his handlebars a fraction, this way or that to avoid a pile of stones, a long rut, a deep puddle. The trouble was the twists to the right when the headlights swung away and the darkness dazed him. He couldn’t see a thing. Only the red glow of the tail light that drew faint threads of pink on his spinning wheel spokes. They climbed and climbed and then there were hairpins to navigate and the road narrowed with tall rock walls towering at his shoulder and the sounds of water like crumpling tissue paper and an entire orchestra of insects whirring about him. At seven forty-five they lumbered through a rock tunnel and laboured up a steep rise, cleared the crest and with a stutter of gears, rolled speedily into Kadugannawa. A shout from a patrolling policeman went unheeded. The town flicked past—the railway station, the rows of ill-lit boutiques. Then the lorry slowed, stopped and a few urchins in torn, sagging trousers congregated to stare. Carloboy put a foot down and eased his right hand. It had begun to ache. The driver grinned.